Gormok has fallen. The only update I’m going to specifically add to my original post on the matter was I have discovered that Last Stand is pretty much as effective as Shield Wall, and lets you save Shield Wall for more important things. However, having done it now dozens of times, I’m confident about the strategy I put forward otherwise. It gets the Impaler down in a timely manner.

Acidmaw and Dreadscale are another matter.

Our strategy has one Tank always on Acidmaw, and two on Dreadscale. DPS, regardless, focuses on Acidmaw. When Dreadscale is mobile, the two tanks swap off, with whichever tank that has Burning Bile moving to clense the Paralytic Toxin. When Dreadscale is stationary, it is the responsibility of whichever player(s) get Burning bile to free the Acidmaw tank. If the Acidmaw tank becomes paralyzed, using a Guardian Spirit, Penance, or other healer cooldown may be necessary. When Acidmaw dies, Tanks swap out tanking the enraged Dreadscale using Shield Wall, and DPS focuses down the worm.

Things we need to do better to make this strategy work:

DPS performance needs to be 100%. Needless to say, Trial of the Grand Crusader puts a real focus on individual performance. This is our biggest issue.

Ranged DPS and Healers need to spread out more when Dreadscale is stationary.

Whomever gets Burning Bile needs to be on their toes.

DPS with Paralytic Toxin need to keep DPS on and not move.

Tanks need to be better about using some cooldowns (Enraged Regeneration, Shield Block, Potions, etc) if their healers become paralyzed.

Simply put we cannot get Dreadscale down before the presence of Icehowl destroys us (generally his via his frost breath). DPS is insufficient mostly because people die, hence the need to spread out more, but we’ve lost just as many attempts because tanks die either because their healers bite it, or because the healers are paralyzed.

I’ll keep updating this series when breakthroughs occur. Just remember, tanks who are in the same boat as me: it’s supposed to be this hard. The problems are not because of tank ability favoritism (e.g. Vezax), no tank is going to be better at this than another. Keep your individual performance high, and encourage the same in your other raid members, and we’ll all be talking about Jarraxas next.

So, as established in the previous post, Heroic Mode Gormok the Impaler is hard. As should be no surprise, it’s just as hard on 25-man. Monday night there was a lot of death on my first Gormok Wipefest.

But we did it.

It was, as I thought, very much like Iron Council Hard Mode – careful coordination of cooldowns to live through the brutally high hits, particularly Impale. Our method after the break.